[SPOILERS] Pindicator promises brighter days ahead

[Lewwyn]

Was going to play, but got sidetracked by a meeting and then found out my daughter was singing after school, so I went and watched that, then went out to celebrate a birthday and I'm going to bed. I can play in 8-9 hours so we'll likely need a short pause.

[pindicator]

Hey, I should be home in 5 hours, so if you can't get it then, I'll be able to do the final setup. Feel more confident in you setting the final troop disposition with your previous war showings though!

[Lewwyn]

Got the turn done. Nothing too exciting. A few opportunities is all.

Let's look here first:




Butte has only a warrior in the city. The elephant is covering a worker, that worker just chopped so that is now flat land. I moved the chariots an axe, a spear and a CKN to hit that elephant. The chariots can then ride into Butte. But the chariots can also make it to the T132 staging tile next turn for elephantine if necessary. Optionality.

The only downside to this is if Gav moves his sentry chariot to the hill next to the elephant, he can see those troops behind the hill, allowing him to start getting prepped and we lose a turn of surprise. However, he hasn't moved the sentry from last turn. So I think it's worth it.

Notice also we gained culture on the mine next to Elephantine so we got vision in the city. A single archer...







We have options. We don't know what Gav has in the fog, but he's only showing the chariot, the elephant, the warrior and the two archers spread over 3 cities. I have to believe that he has some mobile army in the fog for protection vs. Comm. But I don't know how much or where. And maybe half of it is on his Plako border. No idea.

Even more important though, Gav is OUT OF GA and he is still in caste. No whips.

Tech is chugging fine, Gav is 4t from Feudalism and since he is not in GA I'm not sure he can speed that up, particularly if we take his city t132.

TBS offered open borders, I accepted. He has open borders with everyone else and its a good opportunity for us to scout him. Also TBS's culture boomed and we are losing that sugar... Oh well.

Next turn is coming. Hold me.

[pindicator]

Turn teaser: Lewwyn needs to go to vegas while his luck is this hot.

[Lewwyn]

T132 DDay

Greeted by:




Gav knows what's up. Sorry Gav, we're not stopping till we hear the lamentations of your women.

Comm knows what's up too:




This warrior has been traversing our land and this turn reached the coast, just in time to see our 6 galleys.

So I check Gav first:




Yes, Gav knows what's up. Maybe not quite how much its up, but it's up. Gav moved his Sentry chariot north and saw that stack behind the hill. But it looks like he did that a little too late... Notice the Archer and 3 workers on the jungle hill right where we will be invading? I think Gav moved his workers THEN moved the chariot. Shit his pants, moved the archer OUT OF ELEPHANTINE to cover them because that was the only unit he had within range of those workers.

Also there's is an uncovered worker on the border here next to my chariot and the chop finished so its flat land.

Also Butte now has 3 elephants in it. He fears the Butt attack, but there is only an HA in Elephantine now!

I decide we need more info:




Lovely day.

I was afraid there might be a unit there, and there was, but it was just a worker. Hot Damn.

I road the north jungle and move the North group of 2 workers 6 spears 1 sword and 1 CKN onto that mine 2NW of Elepantine. That's our occupation force for the city.


Declare War.

Snipe the worker next to Butte, retreat the chariot to Comm's lands, Gav doesn't have OB with him, chariot is safe. We leave the worker as bait. Debated deleting it.

We decide to kill his war chariot sentry with a spear from the diversion stack. Flawless victory. 2 promos.

And:




2 Cats! That's it? Looks like they are coming up from the south. These can hit our Spear, axe, CKN that we put on the hill NW of Butte, or they can go into Elephantine. Its possible he has a larger group of HAs and cats in the fog, but I doubt he has moved those cats so they won't make it to Elephantine in time. It's possible he has a large number of HA 4tiles south of elephantine, which is where the 1 HA came from and the 2 cats. But I don't think he moved enough north this turn.

We debate about the archer and the 3 workers. I say its too juicy to pass up. We have 5 chariots in range. We worry that we need the chariots to be able to hit elephantine if we want to split the main army from the boats.

We go for it:
I give the first chariot withdraw 1, 19% chance to withdraw... success withdraw and archer injured 2.5
I give the second chariot withdraw 1, 29% to win, 17% to withdraw... success archer dead! Workers captured




Awesome.

I take the worker on the forest, I move all the chariots to cover the 3 workers. We now have 4 chariots there that can hit either Butte or Elephantine. We feel more comfortable splitting the navy army.




4 units next to abydos, 2 CKN, 2 Spear, Everything else on the forest. 12 hitters to hit Elephantine, 4 for Abydos.

Lot's of options here with Butte, Abydos and Elephantine. We'll have to react to Gav. In some ways I wish we were first in the turn.

2nd wave: 10 units on the galleys in 2 turns. Still need more units.




Still worried about Gav's power graph:




We are dumping EPs on him now:




We are counting on capture gold to get us enough gold to 2T CS

Demos:




At least our army is in the top 10 now. We are definitely still a bit soft. Really hoping TBS doesn't get antsy. We should be fine after we get our GA going, still waiting for CS et al.

Did I miss anything Pin? Exciting times.

[pindicator]

I hope Gav plays soon ... if you can get to it before the timer rolls that's fine to play without me, but otherwise we're going to have to ask for a pause

[pindicator]

Turn 132 - Preturn

Nothing moved yet, but I wanted to give the turn a little bit of thought now that I'm home. So here is what Gav did:



That is 4 units lost on our part (2 spears, 2 CKNs) against 2 horse archers lost for Gav. He also plucked the worker in the west that we left open, but again I'm happy with that because that means he's moved a unit out of position. Or rather, moved a war chariot somewhere that we could kill it in response.

Also, I saw that plako took a city from Gavagai on his end of this turn. With pressure on all sides, it looks like Gav has decided to pull everything back.




The main prize stands undefended (gotta be a trap, right?) and Buta was emptied as well. Abydos is being defended though, interesting.

[pindicator]

Turn 132

It seemed pretty obvious that Gav had pulled everything back into the fog in order to try to hit us when we went for Elephantine, and so the first move was to send in some weaker units to capture the undefended towns.  That didn't show anything, so we took our lucky chariot from last turn and promoted it to sentry then sent it into Elephantine.  That unit was able to see what Gav had hidden so well:




4 Elephants, 2 catapults, 8 horse archers (3 wounded), and 10 War Chariots (1 wounded).

Firstly, the spear by Buto killed the War Chariot and captured his worker again.  That spear once again won flawlessly too and since it is out of the range of his main army we're content with it there.  We're hoping this draws units west again - but I don't think so. I think Gav is going to be set on Elephantine, as that city is the real prize of the empire and the only one worth defending. Lewwyn thinks Gav may be just bringing everything away from Plako and after us out of spite -- and it could be, but there isn't any real way to know and no real help in that even if we did. We still want to get Elephantine regardless.

For Elephantine I took a little bit of thought to just jamming everything inside the city - I think we'd barely be able to hold if the luck was even. If it turned south then we'd be wiped out, and I don't think it was worth that risk. Also, our next wave of units is not following up by land but is instead heading to Gerard to dock up on boats by sea. So without an immediate line of reinforcements we instead decided to keep everything out of the range of his elephants and his cataults. We would take the "free" kills of his injured units that had just wiped out our spear stack and then sit tight on the forest there. Then we'd bring the spears and everything from the north to the desert hill north of Elephantine along with 3 workers to road them off the hill next turn.

Final setup:




Well, not entirely final. I whipped Dahlmeier after that to overflow into another 1t build next turn as well. I think we need to get a lot of units out short term right now, but long term we can win this. If we play it smart ... and get lucky ...

[Lewwyn]

Quick question on turn order for lurkers et al.

Plako is also at war with Gavagai now. He started war after Gav played but before us. Do we have to wait for plako to play after Gavagai, or can we play after gavagai and still before plako?

[Zed-F]

If you are both on the same side of the turn split with Gav, then AFAIK you only need to observe turn split with Plako if your troops could interfere with one another e.g. racing to capture the same city, raze tile improvements, etc, or any other situation where war could potentially be declared. If your forces are well-separated then you don’t need to observe turn split with Plako.